


and slow things are beautiful

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Online Friendship, blink-and-you-miss-it mention of courfeyrac/marius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4638921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He soon finds he’s more than willing to listen to Feuilly talk about anything. He has only a few pages of art and very few personal posts, but when he does they have  an ability to overflow with the same excitement, the same deep capacity of really caring about something, that Enjolras had noticed at the start.<br/>Enjolras begins sending him messages; Feuilly begins replying</p>
<p>(or the one where Feuilly is a fanartist, and Enjolras is in love)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and slow things are beautiful

The day Feuilly posts a selfie, Enjolras doesn't notice anything unusual about his reaction in the tags until Courfeyrac sends him a teasing message, and only then does he observe that it’s likely his average reaction to seeing a cute friend of his isn’t necessarily "#oh no, #oh NO, #all this time I've been talking to the cutest person in the world!!!, #you are gorgeous!"

Even after Courfeyrac points this out in an amused text, however, he can’t very much be ashamed. He isn't usually one to compliment looks much, but Feuilly makes jokes about looking ‘average’ or the constant presense of the dark circles under his eyes. Enjolras sees nothing average in the dark freckles splattered like stars over his golden-brown skin, the curly dark brown hair, the sparkling eyes that Enjolras knows are lit up from the inside with the force of Feuilly’s passion about everything at once.

Enjolras thinks Feuilly could use a reminder.

The day it all really began was when Feuilly left some wonderfully insightful commentary on Enjolras’ brief vent-post about the public schooling system; eloquent, well-researched, and pulsing in every word with the sort of passion that Enjolras was intimately familiar with.

He had made a fairly brief comparison to foreign systems and their varying levels of success and Enjolras had jumped in immediately with an answering response. They’d ended up in mutual follows, and Enjolras had gone to sleep.

~~~

The next morning, Courfeyrac sends him a message reading, “did you just get into a political discussion with a popular fanartist without having any idea what he does?”

Enjolras had, apparently, but looking through Feuilly’s art tag he gets a thrill in his chest. He doodles intricate flowers and birds, he sketches portraits, and – yes – he draws fan-art, for books Enjolras isn’t familiar with. The light in the characters’ faces, though, their movements, the composition of the works – they make Enjolras want to read them, or at least listen to Feuilly talk about them.

He soon finds he’s more than willing to listen to Feuilly talk about anything. He has only a few pages of art and very few personal posts, but when he does they have an ability to overflow with the same excitement, the same deep capacity of really caring about something, that Enjolras had noticed at the start.

Enjolras begins sending him messages; Feuilly begins replying.

~~~

Feuilly is working several jobs at once at the given moment, but looking for something more permanent. Feuilly is captivated by any art with a purpose; art created with a message in mind, art that challenged the topography of the world. As a child Feuilly had been fascinated by the Impressionists – particularly their use of light – and he still has a soft spot for them. Feuilly hadn’t gone to art school, but he’d always been fond of art as a stress-relief; he’d just translated that to fan-art. Feuilly had grown up with public libraries as his safest haven.

_I’m a bit of a slow reader_ , Feuilly had confided privately, an evening months and months after that first exchange. Slow writer, too. Not just because of the time constraints, but I always have been like that. I’m sorry if I take a while to reply sometimes, I’m just always a bit nervous about sending stuff.

Enjolras isn't sure how to say that Feuilly's persistence only makes him more admirable, that he'd listen to him talking about anything, that every message he sends is a little ray of light in his day – without sounding condescending.

~~~

Enjolras’ embarrassing crush on Feuilly becomes a running joke when they all gather. They’ve congregated in Joly and Bossuet’s living room and Bahorel offers that the eight of them – _and possibly Courfeyrac’s boyfriend if he feels like joining them today, seriously, Combeferre’s really not that terrifying unless he needs to be_ – steal a train and travel to wherever it is Enjolras’ elusive love lives.

Grantaire picks this up with a few overblown classical references and suggestions for Combeferre's best-man speech – maybe a few years ago, Enjolras would have correctly identified the overblown rambling as a self-destructive bid for his own attention, but they’ve both managed to move on from that point. Joly and Bossuet are beside him; they’re arguing about whether the kid that hangs around sometimes – "His name is Gavroche," Bahorel calls across the room, “and he is my apprentice,” – would make a trustworthy ring-bearer. Jehan is perched on the seat of Bahorel’s armchair and aggressively leaving annotations in the margins of a book that rests on his knee, while Combeferre chides him cheerfully – “what did we tell you about hate-reading philosophy; in front of everyone, Prouvaire, seriously?”

Courfeyrac is sitting next to Enjolras, texting Marius with his feet curled up in his chair, and he grins at Enjolras like he knows what he’s thinking about.

Enjolras is thinking about how much he loves his friends; and also about how much Feuilly would love them, too.

~~~

Feuilly opens commissions; Enjolras e-mails him immediately, attaching a picture of Combeferre and Courfeyrac that he’d had for a while. Courfeyrac’s arm is thrown across his shoulder; Combeferre is smiling radiantly; together, they’re standing in front of Combeferre’s house, the light playing beautifully in the apple trees.

The payment is made; two weeks later, Enjolras gets the picture in the mail. It’s gorgeous; Feuilly may have never met these people, but maybe he’s heard enough about them that Courfeyrac’s freckles or the warmth in Combeferre’s eyes was brought to life to such an extent.

He frames it and sends all his friends excited pictures; Feuilly says that he’d like to draw Enjolras sometime.

Enjolras thinks it’d be nice to do it from life.

Then he thinks about how well Feuilly would bond with everyone – how much he’d love hearing everyone talk about what they love. He and Combeferre would talk for hours about everything; he would engage in passionate debates with Courfeyrac, and then the room would laugh in memory of the time Courfeyrac had set a flyer on fire in the middle of a discussion. He and Grantiare would swap stories of their artistic experiences; he’d laugh at Joly and Bossuet’s wordplay. He’d be delighted with Bahorel’s stories and then become utterly engrossed in his and Jehan’s discussions of literature and theater.

That's the thing about Feuilly – he's constantly striving to broaden his scope of the world; he's fascinated by anything that grants him a new perspective; he holds on to his opinions fast and turned to history, to current events, to art and to music and literature to make the world around him a bigger place.

And there are so many things he might never see; so many ways Feuilly has already come farther and struggled more than Enjolras would never know. Sometimes, he sends Enjolras short tired messages messages in the pattern of, ‘just want to get out of here,” and “do you ever get tired of people”, and Enjolras is left upset - guilty, angry, wishing that he could be anywhere nearby.

But Feuilly cares about everything, cares about the state of the world – every bit of it, even the aspects that Enjolras overlooks. And when he talks about things – gets into an excited ramble about history, or a book he was reading – Enjolras wants nothing more than to see him talking, to see him interact with the rest of his friends, to see what Feuilly looks like when he laughed.

Then he gets up and writes all these thoughts down, followed by a hesitant ‘and do you maybe want to skype sometime?’

Feuilly replies the following afternoon, writing, “ _could have agreed even without the ode to my perfection, but you’ve charmed me into it! Skype it is, might be a while though – busy with stuff._ ”

He follows it up with a second message: “ _Enjolras, thank you._ ”

~~~

Feuilly’s even more entrancing when Enjolras sees him talking through the camera: his eyes sparkle, his mouth quirks upward every time Enjolras makes a horrid pun, his fingers twirl around a stray strand of dark-brown hair.

He looks tired.

Enjolras wishes he didn’t.

~~~

The day they meet, it’s a bright spring day, and the windows of the Musain are letting in crystalline light. Enjolras thinks he’s been surreptitiously checking the time every few minutes ever since two weeks ago, when Feuilly off-handedly mentioned, “I might be staying in the city indefinitely. Not sure how long yet.”

The bell on the door rings from the other room and Enjolras jumps up, the papers in front of him toppling to the floor. Bossuet leans across to Joly, theatrically whispering, “We’re going to have to up our game as the most embarrassingly romantic people in the room.”

“Is it really a fair competition if there’s three of us and two of them –” is Joly’s reply, and then Enjolras softly closes the door behind him.

Feuilly is standing there, a worn bag in his hand, a hesitant smile on his face; Enjolras takes him by the hand and pulls him inside.

And it’s not the time – now’s not the time to tell him, he may be uncomfortable right now, even if the only person in the room with them is Louison – but the scope of everything that’s Feuilly about him is so huge in the room that Enjolras feels like he might burst, and Enjolras quietly says, “Is it all right if I kiss you?”

“I think I’d like it,” Feuilly says; his hands are steady, but his voice shakes a little.

They do – a quick, stolen moment by the entrance of the Musain – and walk into the room together.

**Author's Note:**

> Finally reformatted as of 2016!


End file.
